Once it was exciting

But no more.

Today's budget was a drama-drained drone of yesterday's press releases. In his day Gordon Brown was apocalyptic with a Heathcliff booming voice and contrived surprises. Nothing of any significance can be delivered in Osborne's squeaking falsetto.

Today I had a choice. Attend my 24th budget speech or chair the Health sub-committee of the Council of Europe. The main item was the dangers of mercury in teeth amalgams. Two French experts presented their cases. A top dentist said it was all a tad exaggerated. He was not likely to admit he has been poisoning his patients for decades. A woman campaigner blamed mercury for most diseases from breast cancer to Alzheimers. Fellow budget truant and Portsmouth MP Mike Hancock said the claim of low Alzheimers rates in Japan was not the result of low use of mercury.

Mike assured us that the low incidence among Japanese and Bengalis was because of their close family links. Sufferers are cared for within the family and not in the health services. The dangers of mercury, benzene and a host of now feared chemicals were disregarded in the laboratories in which I worked most of my life. Lucky I got out in time. Laboratory workers have low life expectancies.

Greenpeace hit the right note on the Budget's futility. They said, "Today could have been the day a British government finally made the leap and committed to a different future in which our energy is clean, inexhaustible and home-grown. George Osborne blew it. He is still wedded to the certain nuclear flop that will be expensive, unpopular and late."

David Cameron will leave office with Britain still hooked on oil and China and California surging ahead in the race to build the low carbon technologies that should be developed here at home. How often do Governments have to be told the obvious truth that a jobs-rich energy-abundant future lies in renewables?

I have tried it with the last three Governments.

 

 

Comments

[HuwOS]

"The main item was the dangers of mercury in teeth amalgams"

Seriously?

The evidence as far as I understand it is fairly conclusively that there are no dangers to patients from mercury amalgam.
Although some of the Nordic countries felt that while there was no risk to patients, the regular exposure of dental practitioners could bump them into some level of risk and banned it for those kind of reasons.

Pending any convincing evidence to the contrary I will be utterly sanguine about the fillings I and hundreds of millions of others have and will rate those who warn of dire harm as being in exactly the same vein as any other delusional group, whether 9/11 conspiracy theorists or homeopathists.